ii.

Her process

Debby's paintings are drawn entirely from memory. Decades of travel across Canada — through forests, along shorelines, over prairies — left her with a deep store of landscapes carried not in sketchbooks, but in feeling: the weight of the air before a storm, the way light fell through branches, the stillness of a frozen morning. It's memory that gives her paintings their softness. The unnecessary details fall away, leaving only what mattered.

Watercolour is the perfect medium for this way of working. It has a mind of its own: pigment blooms where it wants, water finds its own edges, and the best marks are often the ones she didn't plan. A wash might drift into something unexpected — a shadow that wasn't there, a glow she couldn't have invented. Debby has learned to trust these moments rather than fight them. The most honest paintings come from a conversation between what she remembers and what the water decides.

Trees are at the centre of everything she paints. Not as botanical subjects, but as presences — quiet, steady, and deeply generous. They hold a landscape together, mark the passage of seasons, and stand as witnesses to time. They give us clean air, shelter, shade, and stillness, asking nothing in return. Debby paints them because she believes they deserve our attention — and because, in their patience and endurance, they have something to teach us about how to be in the world.

I love the challenge of watercolours. You take control of it; it takes control of you — expecting the unexpected.
— Debby Ryan-Hobbs